I've used gmail for the last couple of years, but only because email hasn't been very important to me and I've had always-on web access. Now that both of those

I've used gmail for the last couple of years, but only because email hasn't been very important to me and I've had always-on web access. Now that both of those circumstances seem about to change, I think it's time I learned my way around mutt... or some other offline client. The one thing I dislike about gmail is that I find myself reluctant to use it to write long emails. Especially in Basic HTML view.